Yabba Dabba Joes
by CrystalOfEllinon
Summary: Crackfic. Time travel, pop culture refrences, cursing, and oh yeah Joes shooting dinosaurs. M for swearing. Lots of swearing.
1. Chapter 1

This is NOT MY FAULT. I was roped into it by a bunch of crazy people. You know who you are. Yeah. Not. My. Fault.

And okay, so maybe I totally wanted to see Snake Eyes fight a T-Rex and BeachHead punch a Utahraptor. Still not my fault.

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Well.

_That _had been unpleasant.

Duke groaned, considering peeling himself out of the grass…_grass? We were just in a damn lab._ His body wasn't enthusiastic about this idea, and seeing as there weren't bullets zinging past his ears any longer his brain wasn't all that motivated either.

"Top?"

Duke reluctantly peeled his eyelids open and blinked several times. Dusty's slightly worried face swam into view. "Five more minutes?" He murmured.

"He'll be fine." _That _voice got Duke moving; that deep, smug, slightly condescending baritone was familiar.

"DESTRO YOU SON OF A BITCH…" Duke lunged to his feet, everything coming back in a flash. The recent firefight in the Scottish scientist's lab, the complicated contraption that all intel had indicated was extremely dangerous shooting out a sudden white light, and then darkness and everything had gone all funny and dark and swirly for about ten seconds.

His feet seemed to have other ideas than supporting him, though, and his stomach rebelled violently against the sudden movement. Duke staggered, retched, and nearly faceplanted into the grass. A large, balaclava-clad form appeared suddenly and helpfully dragged him to his feet again by the back of his shirt.

"You okay, Duke?" Beach was glaring at Destro too. "What the gawddamn hell just happened? Most of the vipers are still out cold. Where the gawddamn hell are we?"

"He's fine." Duke finally managed to focus on Destro, even though the sun reflecting off that silver mask was giving him a headache. "Some individuals are sensitive to timeshifts and experience dizziness, disorientation, and nausea directly following a transition. It will wear off in about fifteen minutes."

Timeshift?

Duke glanced around, doing a quick head count on the rest of the strike team he'd been with…Beach, Dusty, Snake, Scarlett, Storm, Roadblock, Outback…all accounted for. Beach and Dusty were both on their feet, apparently fine. Snake Eyes and Scarlett were up too, and Roadblock and Outback were sitting up, looking like Duke felt. Storm was out cold, crumpled in a limp heap right next to the viper he'd been reducing to shark chum roughly thirty seconds ago. The viper's corpse still had a sword jammed through his ribcage. Snake Eyes knelt next to his unconscious friend and clicked his fingers right next to Tommy's ear; the white-clad ninja groaned.

The vipers were slowly staggering to their feet. Violence seemed to have been momentarily set aside by all parties, but both Joes and Cobras were eyeing each other warily.

Duke glared hard at the masked man in front of him. "You'd better damn well be able to explain what the _fuck _is going on here. And while you're at it, give me one convincing reason that I shouldn't empty a clip into you. Also, _where the fuck are we? _And what the _fuck_ is that thing?" He pointed to the complex piece of machinery sitting innocently on a crushed shrub, looking totally out of place in the warm, humid temperate forest they'd somehow ended up in. Wherever they were, it sure as hell wasn't a buried lab in the middle of the Australian Outback.

"Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore." Duke heard Scarlett's soft voice somewhere behind him. "Are those _cycads? _Those are almost _extinct._ Storm, you okay?"

Another groan, and then the sound of retching. Duke sympathized completely; his own stomach was still considering sending his breakfast back up.

Destro's expression was impossible to read behind that polished silver mask, but his eyes were bright and Duke knew, just _knew, _that the crazy Scottish motherfucker was grinning. "I did tell you not to touch my machine. But I'm rather glad you did. It would appear that my machine works over even more extreme shifts. And cool your temper, dear enemy. If you kill me now, it is most doubtful that you will ever see your home again." The man looked away from Duke, up at the tall, vaguely palm-like trees above them. "Interesting."

Duke gritted his teeth. "Where. Are. We?"

Destro crouched, picked a small pink flower off the ground, and examined it closely. "Interesting indeed." He tucked the flower into a pocket.

"You son of a bitch…_where are we? _I don't have time for flower-picking right now." Duke cracked his knuckles. "I can cause some pain without killing you, you know. Or, even better, I can get Snake Eyes to do it."

"If we're torturing the sheep fucker, I've got dibs." Storm Shadow's voice was unsteady, but the tone of bloody murder was unmistakable.

A low chuckle, which sent Duke's blood pressure through the roof. Red tinged the edges of his vision. Destro seemed unperturbed by the jab at his sexual orientation. "It's not _where _we are, my friends. It's _when. _Judging from the vegetation, I'd say the late Cretaceous." Another chuckle. "And they said it couldn't be done. Ross swore that you couldn't stabilize a wormhole long enough."

Duke blinked, taken aback. The word "cretaceous" was pulling up his long-ago natural history classes. "Cretaceous? As in sixty-five million years ago?"

"From our own time, yes. For us personally, it is _now._" Destro chuckled again, the sound edged with sheer glee. "Oh, Scientific American is _never _going to believe this. I'll need samples. Biological samples. _Large _biological samples, which have the side benefit of satisfying my sadly narrow-minded employer as well."

Duke closed his eyes. Of course. Of _course._ Cobra Commander would watch Jurassic Park and consider it a source of inspiration. "Right. So can you get us home, or do I let Beachhead shoot you?"

"I ain't in a good mood, neither." Beach growled. "Can I go break the vipers, Top?"

"I can, and if you start killing my men, I am not going to." Destro folded his arms.

"That would be a no, Beach." Duke sighed. "How long will it take?"

"It requires delicate calibration and the equations involved are complex. Without my lab equipment, I'll have to make do with my emergency tools." Destro tilted his head back. "I'd say two days."

"Two _DAYS?"_ This was a general chorus from all present.

Destro managed to look slightly insulted even through a metal mask. "Given the fact that I can dial it in to a precise second of time, and that it is, after all, a _working_ _time machine, _I feel that two days is a fairly reasonable calibration period. Unless you'd _rather _come out two miles under the ocean or inside a mountain." A sigh. "But then, I am speaking with a bunch of Army grunts. I don't suppose you understand."

Beach growled. Duke shot him a warning look.

"Uh, Top?" Dusty sounded nervous. "You ever see 'Jurassic Park', Top? It didn't go well for the humans. _Really _didn't go well for the humans."

A snort from Destro. "That movie was foolishly unrealistic, and we are armed. The local fauna should be more worried about running afoul of _us. _We should be fine." A pause. "It will be an interesting reflection on the intelligence of the Commander's peons to see how many Vipers survive. My money is on five percent, at best. Speaking of which…" The weapons dealer turned to eye the wary Vipers. "No shooting our erstwhile enemies. Quite frankly, I feel better having them guarding my back than you."

There was an exclamation of alarm and indignation from several of the vipers. Both the Joes and Destro completely ignored them.

"Okay." Duke massaged a temple. "We won't kill you, you won't try and kill us. UNTIL we get back home. You get working on whatever the hell it is that you need to work at. Outback?"

"Sir?"

"Find us a good campsite. Looks like we'll be here for a few days. Food and water would be good too. Preferably the kind that doesn't poison us."

"Sir!" Outback should not, Duke thought as his head twinged, sound so excited about the prospect. But then, wilderness survival in a world where every other mammal on the planet was still doing duty as food for the bigger critters WOULD appeal to the survivalist.

"I would kill for some Tylenol." He muttered to himself.

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Shana O'Hara had been through some weird shit in her life. She was engaged to a ninja master, for chrissakes. What disturbed her most about the current situation is that the current situation _didn't _disturb her more. Time machine? Sure, that made sense. Blasted back to the Cretaceous period by Outback poking the button that looked most likely to shut things down on the ominously glowing contraption in Destro's lab? Okay, sure. Entering into an uneasy truce with Destro and his Vipers long enough to fix the time machine to get home? Hey, it could happen.

Outback had located a protected campsite only a few hundred yards away from the time machine. It was near a spring, and there was plenty of wood for the fire that Outback had started in about thirty seconds using a rock and his knife blade.

The Joes were taking turns standing guard over the machine. Quite frankly, none of them trusted the vipers to do it, and none of them trusted Destro not to take himself home and maroon the lot of them. Right now Beach was on guard duty, though Dusty had just gone to relieve him; Shana herself would take over in a few hours.

Storm was meticulously touching up the edge on one of his many knives; the soft rasp of metal against oiled stone was making the vipers twitchy. Judging by the suspicious little smirk on Storm's face and the fact that the knife was already gleamingly, murderously sharp, this was the ninja's sole goal.

The fact that Snake Eyes was keeping a watchful eye on the Cobra agents wasn't helping either. That impassive, implacable visored gaze was actually making several vipers shift farther away from the warmth of the fire, purely to put a few more yards between themselves and the black-clad, uzi-cradling ninja.

"GAWDDAMN FUCKING BASTARD LIZARDS!" There was the sound of a boot connecting with something meaty, a screech of pain, and the sound of small, skittering feet in the dusk.

"Beach is back." Roadblock observed calmly. The gun-toting chef had managed to make the meager plant based edibles Outback had turned up taste pretty good. Shana was still hungry; there had been a vote started by Tommy to feed a few likely looking berries and other plant parts to a few vipers to text for toxicity, but this had been shot down.

Beach stomped into the circle of firelight, scowling. "Feathery little gawddamned bastards tried to chew on my shins."

Destro looked up keenly. The scientist had abandoned his tinkering with his machine when he'd started to lose the light, and was now making calculations in a small notebook he'd produced along with a pen from one of his pockets. "Small therapods?" A pause. "I'm sorry…two legs or four?"

Beach favored the scientist with a long, withering glare. "You ain't the only one with book learning here. They were trooedon, to be exact. Looked jus' like my textbook pictures. An' they've got sharp little teeth." The Ranger leaned over and pulled something out of the tough leather of his boots. "Left one with me."

"I think they like you." Tommy observed. "They followed you." The ninja nodded at the trees; Shana looked, and saw little glowing amber eyes peering out of the brush.

"Little bastards." Beach scowled. "Got a taste and want more? Ain't as smart as mah natural history book made em' out to be. You'd think after ah sent the first one flyin' they'd get the hint."

"You must be tasty." Tommy was grinning.

"Shuttup, spook." Beach was eyeing one of the curious little therapods hungrily. "Y'know what they look like? Turkeys. Skinny turkeys. Skinny, annoying turkeys. Ah'm hungry." He reached for his sidearm.

"No." That was Tommy; Beach glanced over in annoyance, but the ninja was eyeing the small dinosaurs with the same hungry glint in his eyes. "Save your ammo." He reached for his bow. "I've got this one."

"Storm, no." Scarlett snapped. "Have you ever heard of time paradoxes?"

"Have you ever heard of survival of the fittest?" Tommy calmly strung his bow. "I'm still hungry."

"Actually, time paradox will not be an issue." Destro's deep voice interjected. "I've done extensive experimentation, and it turns out that it is impossible to change our timeline in any measurable way; the actions undertaken by time travelers are already factors. They already happened, you see. However hard you try, when time traveling you are changing nothing."

"Anotherwards," There were several rapidfire _twanging_ sounds, and a frightened screech from the flock of trooedons. Most of the flock vanished into the underbrush, but several keeled over, arrows sticking clear through the slim, feathery bodies. One was pinned to a tree trunk. Tommy sounded smug as he stood and went to retrieve his kills. "I'm not going hungry tonight."

A sigh from Destro as Tommy cleaned the blood from his arrows and Beach and Outback happily started skinning the dinos. "Yes. You can eat them. Simpleminded fools…only concerned with the grossest application of a scientific revelation centuries in the making."

Tommy turned to eye the weapons dealer, a hard glitter in his eyes. "Oh, I understand enough to know that your 'extensive experimentation' probably means that you tried to kill at least a few of us in the cradle, and failed. How many of your vipers and Night Creepers did my father kill, exactly?" A flash of white teeth. "And my grandfather, for that matter. And my great-grandfather. And my great-great grandmother. You'd have to go back a very, very long way in my family to find _anyone_ that the average Cobra agent would have even a ghost of a chance against."

That…was an unsettling thought. Shana winced, trying not to picture Cobra agents closing in on her family and her, just a helpless babe in a crib…she shuddered.

There was a long moment of silence. Tommy's grin widened and he went back to sharpening a green stick to use as a skewer. "A few, hmm? That's what I thought."

"There were…incidents." Destro said at last, grudgingly. "Even for those who don't have annoyingly competent ancestors," (Tommy grinned wolfishly as he tossed a skewer to Snake Eyes and both ninja followed Beach's lead and began toasting dino cutlets) "odd accidents seem to happen when attempts are made to change history. I lost almost three dozen agents before I gave up."

Shana breathed a soft sigh of relief. This wasn't going to turn into a bad Terminator knockoff, then.

Snake Eyes signed in one-handed in the unintelligible half anglicized Japanese finger-spelling and half ASL shorthand that only Tommy seemed to understand. The white-clad ninja laughed. "No bet; you know how fat those boars were. I'd give a lot to remember seeing my father instructing a half-dozen Night Creepers in proper combat techniques, though."

Another flurry of indecipherable signs. Tommy laughed again and replied in Japanese. Scarlett accepted a trooedon leg and a skewer from Snake Eyes and claimed a good bed of coals.

The smell of cooking meat was enticing; her stomach made a loud, insistant sound of anticipation. Several minutes later, she nibbled experimentally at the dinosaur drumstick, burning her tongue in the process.

Not bad. Tasted rather like a cross between alligator and dark meat chicken. It would have been excellent with barbeque sauce.

"Little dry." Roadblock said thoughtfully. "Needs a marinade or a sauce. It's got a good texture, though."

"Dibs on the liver." Dusty said cheerfully.

"Welcome to it." Tommy finished sharpening another stick, stabbed the appropriate organs, and handed the shish-kebabed dinosaur bits over to the desert trooper. "Not a fan of organ meat." He shot a dirty look at Destro. "Particularly not when you take all the most disgusting parts and boil them into an inedible lump."

Destro sniffed. "There is nothing wrong with haggis."

"There is _everything _wrong with haggis." Tommy wiped the blood off of his hands in the short, dense grass.

Destro seemed to deign the ninja's needling as beneath his notice. Scarlett did, however, notice that their enemy/ally's eyes were fixed on the food. Duke apparently did too, because he wordlessly offered a portion over.

All of the Joes glanced up curiously, waiting for the Scotsman to remove his mask. Destro just retreated back from the light of the fire, however, ruining the chance at appeased curiosity.


	2. Chapter 2

Tommy was twitchy.

He hadn't let on about this to anyone, of course, but he was. He'd made himself feel a little better by terrifying the Vipers, but that wasn't helping him sleep.

It all _sounded _wrong. Tommy had slept in the bush before; during his LRRP tours, he'd considered a good dry bed of ferns a luxury. But those forests had sounded like forests were supposed to. Here? The bird-sounds were wrong. The insect-sounds were wrong. The animal-sounds were wrong. It even _smelled _wrong. And as much as he relied on his ears for information and as highly-developed as his sense of paranoia was, anything that Sounded Wrong rang every alarm bell in his brain.

Thanks to this, he'd spent the last five hours dozing off only to snap back to full alertness as soon as something that wasn't any animal he'd ever heard before rustled past outside the circle of firelight.

As soon as he managed to drop off semi-soundly, he was woken yet again by a twig bouncing off his head. He was already on his feet and had a throwing star prepped by the time his brain kicked into gear and his eyes opened. Just as quickly as he located the source of the disturbance, however, he recognized it and relaxed fractionally.

"Relax, Tommy." Shana didn't sound fazed. "Just me. It's your turn for watch."

Tommy scowled irritably. "Of course it is." He slid the throwing star away and rolled his shoulders, working the kinks out.

"Someone's grouchy." Shana settled back down next to Snake, who was sleeping sitting up, his back against a tree trunk and one hand on an uzi. She appropriated Snake Eyes' thigh as a pillow; the ninja half-woke, his hand tightening on his gun, before recognizing her and immediately dropping back off. Tommy's scowl deepened. He couldn't imagine life without the Ear that Sees, but he did occasionally envy others their ability ignore annoying noises. Or not even _hear _annoying noises.

"You will be too when you don't get your drug fix in the morning." Tommy took a half-step and faded into the shadows before she could answer; she just shook her head and shut her eyes.

The complicated black bulk of the machine glinted faintly in the starlight. Tommy glared at it, found a good tree, and shinnied his way up it. Settled on a fairly comfortable branch, he eyed the little clearing and hoped that one of the Vipers would turn up.

Somewhere far off, some sort of animal shrieked, a high, raucous, grating sort of noise. Something about it triggered very deep instincts buried and almost forgotten in the depths of the mammalian brain, holdovers from when mammals had been viewed pretty much as tasty, bite-sized snacks by the rest of the food chain.

The hair on the back of Tommy's neck rose and his hand tightened on his bow despite himself. It just _sounded _wrong. But he relaxed again after a few seconds; there really wasn't anything to be terribly afraid of. Nothing was going to sneak up on him without his knowledge, particularly nothing weighing several tons. And if something did decide to try and nibble on him…well, evolution had taught humans to cheat the food chain with sharp sticks and fire eons ago.

Tommy's weapons were a far cry from sharpened sticks, and he could do things with them that would have utterly blown the minds of his hominid ancestors. He leaned back against the tree trunk, trained his ears and eyes on the forest around him, and watched.

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Duke was woken by the sounds of two Vipers arguing, and when he opened his eyes he was already feeling distinctly grumpy.

"I'm not touching it."

"Don't be a pussy, man. Just one bite. Even if it is poison, one little bite probably won't kill you."

"So YOU try it."

"SHUT. UP." That was Shana's voice, and Duke cringed at the sheer, snarling, so-help-me-Christ-I-will-fucking-kill-you growl the redhead had managed. "Or I will feed both of you your own _feet._"

Duke rolled to his feet, cracked his neck, and glared. It was barely dawn; the sky was still pink and orange through the trees. Dusty was still snoring; the desert trooper was using a tree root as a pillow and was apparently completely comfortable. Everyone else appeared to be awake, and in Scarlett's case _severely_ cranky. Duke eyed her warily; if looks could kill, both of the blue-uniformed Cobra troops would have been fried crispy, doused in gasoline, and set on fire with a blowtorch.

Something nagged at the back of his brain. Something…

Oh, shit.

Duke gulped.

There wasn't any coffee in the late Cretaceous. And Scarlett, who wasn't a morning person at the best of times, was hitting withdrawal.

To be fair, this happened on missions all the time. But usually there were enemies for Scarlett to worry about, or an objective to focus on. In the absence of enemy soldiers that she could break or a mission objective beyond simple survival to focus on, Scarlett's brain was free to focus solely on the fact that it hadn't had its morning shot of java.

"Do we have anything left for breakfast?" He interjected loudly, successfully diverting Scarlett's wrath from the hapless vipers and probably, by the looks on the men's faces, saving their pants from involuntary soiling.

"No. We will, though." Roadblock said calmly. "Outback is foraging, and Storm and Beach are hunting. Snake is keeping an eye on Destro while he plays with the machine. If you're thirsty, that's been sanitized." 'Block pointed at a canteen.

"Okay then. Thank you."

The camp had divided itself into two groups; Joes on one side of the fire, Cobras on the other. Both sides had settled into glaring at each other uneasily.

There was a sudden rustling in the trees. Everyone reached for weapons instinctively, but it was just Outback, who looked uncommonly exited about something.

"Dinosaurs! Whole herd of them!" The man was gesticulating excitedly in the general direction of the clearing where the time machine was sitting. "Big ones! You _have _to see this!"

Human curiosity piqued and without a whole hell of a lot else to do, most of both the Joes and Cobra agents trotted in the direction Outback had pointed.

When they came into sight of the creatures, Duke felt his jaw sag despite himself.

They were _big. _

They were moving on two legs, but the front legs were powerfully muscular and where the thumb should be there was instead a long, wickedly sharp spike. The creatures were browsing contentedly on the underbrush; a few of them raised their heads and sniffed in the general direction of the humans, but mammal-smell wasn't something coded into their small brains as 'dangerous'. They went back to chewing on the local flora, looking ridiculously like the biggest, most dangerous cattle in the history of ever.

Just a few yards away, on the edge of the clearing, Destro was perched on the top of his machine, scribbling frantically in his notebook. Snake Eyes was standing close against the great metal bulk of the thing too, eyeing the herd of creatures warily, his hand on an uzi…Duke racked his brains, he _knew _he should know this, spiky thumbs, spiky thumbs, Mrs. Phillys in natural history, they were named after a lizard…_iguanodon, _that was it.

"Mother of God." Roadblock said softly.

The iguanodon didn't seem to notice the machine in the middle of their herd. Probably, Duke thought dazedly, they simply couldn't process such a thing and so ignored it.

They stood there, just watching, for probably a quarter of an hour while the creatures sauntered by, happily denuding the low lying shrubbery of tender new growth.

The slightest rustle in the undergrowth was all that announced Beachhead's arrival.

"There's a small un' trailing behind the rest of the herd." The Ranger's eyes were fixed firmly on the dinosaurs. "Storm's stalking it. When they get past Destro's machine we're gonna shoot it. The rest of em'll stampede, an' we don't wanna break our ticket home. That should keep us fed for a bit."

"You're going to _shoot _one of those things?" Duke eyed the immense creatures. "What caliber are you packing that could take one of those down?"

Beach grinned under the balaclava. "Well, that's why ah came back here. Roadblock! You want to get the Browning warmed up?"

"A very good idea_._" This was hissed from _directly behind them._ Beach cursed. Duke jumped, and automatically opened his mouth to reprimand the ninja for startling a superior officer. But he shut his mouth almost at once; Storm Shadow looked wary; his eyes were focused on the trees behind the herd of herbivores. Duke knew that look to be the 'we've got problems headed our way' look. "We're about to have far greater concerns than skipping breakfast."

Storm Shadow had been on the team long enough for Duke to know that the same rules that applied to Snake Eyes applied to the ex-Cobra agent; when the ninja was feeling edgy about something, it was for a really good reason. It was the same general principle as 'a bomb tech at a dead run outranks a general'; 'the ninja who is nervous should be listened to'. The Joes, as one, checked whatever armaments they were carrying.

"What? Why? What's going on?" One of the vipers was apparently not familiar with this concept.

Tommy slid over towards the machine; Snake Eyes looked over, and Tommy made a few shorthand gestures. Snake Eyes nodded. "We are not the only ones who are eyeballing these things for breakfast." The ninja said over his shoulder. "And the things hunting these creatures have very large teeth and very, very large claws."

"Shit." Duke heard Beach curse under his breath. The Ranger clicked the safety off of his rifle. "If those critters stampede…we can't let em' damage that thing, or we won't never get home."

"Agreed." Duke checked the clip in his own weapon automatically. "Right. Hold a perimeter around Destro's toy. Nothing gets through. No matter _what _happens."

"Yes sir." Scarlett's voice had gone from 'pissy' to 'steel'.

It was about then that one of the iguanodons suddenly looked up from the shrubbery, nostrils flaring. Unlike the scent of the humans, however, whatever faint odor it caught on the air this time made those big amber bird-eyes roll in alarm. The creature raised its head and trumpeted, and within two seconds Duke learned something new; however big they were, when they were scared, iguanodons were _fast_. And _loud._

Storm said what was presumably a very bad word in Japanese.

Thankfully, it became apparent after a few seconds that when stampeding at least this type of dinosaur affected a 'follow the tail of the guy in front of you' rather than a 'scatter in panic' approach, and they were generally heading past and away from rather than at the team. The few that did veer close seemed to see the time machine as a rock, and gave it a wide berth.

Duke almost relaxed.

And then one straggler burst from the trees, heading right for them; its eyes were wide and wild and it didn't seem to see them, or maybe it wasn't paying attention to anything but the things of sleek, graceful muscle and deadly intent snapping at its heels.

They were really quite beautiful, Duke thought detachedly. He'd seen Jurassic Park, and his first thought was that Spielberg had _almost _gotten them right…the way they moved, quick and birdlike, the wicked curve of those giant ginsu knives of claws on their feet, the gleam of intelligence in their eyes. But not quite right, because these things had feathers; spiky crests on the top of their heads, a light fuzz of down over their bodies.

The iguanodon was bleeding profusely from long claw marks down either flank. Even as they watched, the raptors lunged and dug the steak-knife finger claws into either side again, then fell back, leaving a dozen fresh dripping wounds, apparently content to wait for the beast to weaken and falter from exhaustion and blood loss.

Every mammal instinct he had was screaming at him to run. Instead, along with the rest of the team, he smoothly shouldered his rifle and fired at the charging Juggernaut bulk of panicked iguanodon. There was a moment of ear shattering thunder as firearms roared.

It was probably Roadblock's 50 cal browning that brought it down. A bellow of pain, and the beast crashed to the ground not ten feet away from Duke's feet, twitching.

The raptors screeched, nimbly dodging the toppling bulk, and trotted to a halt. There were two of them; they stood shoulder to shoulder not twenty feet away, looking straight at the Joes and nervous Vipers and sniffing the air curiously. One chirruped, an unsettlingly birdlike sound. The other chirruped back.

"If we're lucky, they'll just start eating." Destro said softly. "Hope they don't see us as..."

Both dinosaurs suddenly raised the spiky, feathery crests on their necks and hissed threateningly. The one on the right flexed its fingers, the claws glinting in the morning sun.

"...a threat." Destro finished. "Or perhaps I spoke too soon."

The next movements took place over about two and a half seconds, but seemed much longer. The raptors lunged, and the humans opened fire again. Duke _saw _them get hit, knew they must be dead, but they were incredibly fast, one had already leapt, and Beachhead was going down underneath it, and the second had latched onto and unlucky viper with its final few moment of life. The viper was screaming, and there was an angry roar coming from under the other raptor even as Duke lunged towards where Beach had vanished under it, and the raptor was reeling back as a familiar fist slammed upwards into its chin.

A forty-five sidearm sounded twice. The raptor collapsed, jerked and went still. Beach was cursing and wriggling his way out from under the corpse.

"BEACH!" Duke was yelling. "Are you okay?" He was hauling at the inert mass of dead dinosaur, and so was Snake, and then Roadblock grabbed it by the tail and heaved it aside with a grunt.

"MOTHERFUCKING WHORESON! SUCK SATAN'S COCK IN HELL!" Beach scrambled to his feet. "Why does every critter ah meet here try to CHEW ON MAH FACE? Am ah TASTY? Is THAT IT? Well, FUCK YOU, YOU SORRY EXCUSE FOR A LIZARD."

"He sounds okay." Dusty observed calmly.

"SON OF A BITCH RUINED MAH ARMOR. THIS WAS A BRAND NEW TAC VEST YEW COCKSUCKER!" Beach glared down at the dead dinosaur. "Ah'm fine, Top. Jus' scratched me a bit with those claws on his feet. Armor took most of the damage."

Since "Ah'm fine" in Beachspeak could mean "the limb is still mostly attached and I duct taped the intestines back in" the grumpy Sergeant Major was still subjected to an examination anyway, at Duke's insistence. Fortunately, the damage _was _simply a few fairly shallow grazes and a few bruises.

The Viper, on the other hand, hadn't been wearing a tac vest and hadn't reacted to a raptor attack with an immediate face punch. He was pretty obviously dead. Generally, getting your head bitten most of the way off was fairly terminal.

"Well." Destro clicked the safety on his own sidearm back on. "That was exciting. You two." He pointed at the two nearest vipers. "You get to bury him." A gesture at the dead viper. "And the rest of you, do try not to die as easily as he did."

"I see you're as great a motivational speaker as ever." Storm Shadow's voice was dry. "I can just feel the morale rising."

"I do not need to justify myself to you, ninja."

Tommy flipped Destro off. "Can I please just maim him a _little, _Duke?"

Duke massaged a temple. "No. And no 'accidents' either. Or anything that would cause excruciating pain but not leave marks. You too, Snake Eyes. And Scarlett. Does _anyone _have an asprin?"


	3. Chapter 3

God damn it, this keeps getting longer...probably one more chapter, and then a epilogue, and this crackbunny out of control will be finished. Then I will return to my other fics. Remember them? No? Yeah...maybe should work on those...

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Snake Eyes had a pretty high weirdness threshold. His best friend was the scion of a ninja family centuries old. He himself was a master of a ninja clan. His job description included foiling the plans of a snake-themed terrorist organization headed by a man who considered building a weather dominator or a space laser a viable world domination scheme.

So the current turn of events hadn't really ruffled his feathers much. Destro building a time machine? Sure, he could buy that. It _working? _Well, Destro was many things, many of them unsavory, but even Snake Eyes would admit that 'brilliant' was right up on the top of the list, and the man was completely unencumbered by little things like 'morality' or 'ethical research guidelines'.

So aside from Dusty and Outback, Snake Eyes was probably the most at ease out of the lot of them. (Dusty's good-natured calm seemed undamaged, though he'd sighed a bit about being deposited in a temperate forest after happily trekking through the scorching dry heat of the Outback desert, and Outback was downright ecstatic about the whole adventure.) Tommy was twitchy and irritable and hiding it by systematically terrorizing the Vipers, Duke was apparently nursing a low-level but annoying tension headache, Shana was irritable and grumpy, Beach was…well, Beach, and Roadblock was fretting about ammo stocks for his Browning.

Fortunately, after the interesting little incident with the raptors and the iguanodon herd, they probably didn't have to worry about food. And getting to shoot something seemed to have improved Shana's mood.

Back at their camp, Outback happily stretching a raptor hide over a fallen log and scraping it. One of the Vipers had produced a pack of cards from somewhere, and a complicated version of Texas Hold 'Em was in session, the participants trying hard to ignore Tommy, who was lovingly oiling his swords. Destro was doing whatever it was that he had to do to the machine, watched over by an irritable Duke.

Beach Head was grumpily examining the damage to his body armor; the raptor's claws had gouged deep rents into the tac vest. Snake Eyes still felt rather sorry for the creatures; of all the possible targets, to go after the Sergeant Major….and biting a viper…that would just cause indigestion.

Shana settled herself next to where he was sitting, cleaning an uzi more to have something to do than because it really needed it. He carefully reassembled the firearm.

*Bored?* He watched her fiddling with her ponytail.

"Yes." She sighed. "And I hate this…not knowing for sure if we'll get back."

*It could be worse.* Snake shrugged.

She raised an eyebrow, then smiled suddenly. "You're right….I could be stuck here not knowing if I'd ever see you again."

*…I was more thinking that thing could have hurt Beach, but that works too.*

A snort. "Please. I don't even know why he wears armor with hide as tough as his. I'd feel sorry for the poor raptor with broken teeth if it had actually bitten him."

Snake Eyes contemplated that for a moment. *Very possible.*

She shifted restlessly. "You want to go for a walk? I hate sitting here and doing nothing."

Snake stood; she followed suit. No one spared them a second glance as he followed her into the trees.

After just a few minutes and probably no more than a few hundred yards away from camp, she turned to him. Snake glanced at her, and smiled under his mask. He knew that look…

A hand slid up his spine. "You know," She purred, "we're technically the first humans ever to walk the earth right now. Want to invent fooling around?"

Snake grinned even more widely. *I knew it. 'Walk' my ass.*

"Less talking, please."

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Anthony O' Brian, better known as "Viper four, Squad 102", was not very good at poker. He enjoyed it, though, which made him popular amongst his squad mates…particularly just after payday.

Without actual money to bet with, though, he found he enjoyed the game even _more. _Or would have, if that creepy man in the white pajamas would _stop playing with knives._ Anthony wasn't even sure where they kept _coming _from, but every time he glanced over the man was examining a different piece of pointy death.

Anthony had been recruited just after the notorious ninja master Storm Shadow had left Cobra, but he'd heard the stories, and he'd seen enough of the man's work to know that fear was a fully justified and even sensible reaction.

The sixteenth time he glanced nervously over (an action being mirrored by all of Squad 102) the man was looking _right at him._ Anthony felt a sudden and intense need to Not Be Anywhere Close To The Crazy Ninja Master, or for that matter the Crazy Guy Who Punched A Dinosaur In The Face.

At least Crazy Ninja Master With Fucking Uzis Who Killed All of Squad 103 Last Month had disappeared somewhere, as had Hot But Batshit Crazy Redhead Who Would Feed Me My Own Testicles As Soon As Look At Me. Still, that wasn't nearly enough.

He tossed his cards down. "I'm out. I gotta take a leak."

"Okay." Viper Six, also known as Steve Phyllis, grunted.

Away from the piercing glare of the ninja and the loud, intimidating tank of a man that was the G.I. Joe Sergeant Major, Anthony felt himself relax. A ways into the trees, he found a likely-looking shrub, unzipped his pants, and proceeded to utterly confuse any scent-oriented creatures that might come sniffing around later.

As he was zipping his fly back up, he wrinkled his eyebrows. He went still…and there it was again. Odd noises….sounded almost like….panting? And…someone moaning?

Curious, he trotted in the direction of the noises. A hundred yards further into the trees, he shoved aside some of the head-high fern fronds…

…And his brain shut down. That…that was….well, he couldn't really see her face, what with the woman being bent over a fallen tree that way, but there _was _only one woman right now, and that red hair was unmistakable.

And the man…well, the black mask and visor lying discarded on the forest floor was pretty unmistakable.

Anthony felt his jaw dropping. _Holy Shit…_ Cobra barracks rumor had claimed that the terrifying masked commando and the crazy redheaded intel agent/martial artist/psycho killer bitch from hell spent the times they weren't murdering their way through Cobra facilities getting freaky.

They'd been _right._ And right now, he had front-row seats. And psycho bitch or not, the red haired Joe woman was even better looking naked than Anthony had imagined.

It was probably that that distracted him from the fact that his arrival hadn't gone unnoticed. He noticed the ninja's hand moving too late; there was a flash of motion, and Anthony was yelping in pain as a goddamned knife suddenly appeared in his thigh. He staggered back, fell, scrambled painfully back to his feet, and awkwardly hopped away from the pair of Joes as quickly as he could.

Twenty yards on, he fell again, whimpering, and eyed the knife in his leg. He tugged it out, and nearly fainted.

A little chirruping sound made him blink the haze of pain and black dots out of his vision; he found himself staring into the little gold bird-eyes of one of those tiny two legged critters that had been hanging around camp the previous night. He relaxed fractionally.

"Shoo." He waved his hand at it. It didn't move, and four more of the delicate little creatures slunk out of the underbrush. Something like unease clenched in the pit of his stomach. It sharpened when the first critter edged closer, and three more appeared from nowhere.

They were all staring at him the same way he stared at a grilling steak. All thirteen… (Thirteen? Where had the other five come from?) started edging closer, chirping to each other eagerly.

He swatted away the first one to lunge for him, but then the others were on him, and he didn't even have time to scream before needle-sharp little teeth closed on his throat.

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Several miles away, a very large creature lifted its head and sniffed. It saw the world through smell more than sight, though it had very good vision too.

Meat. Dead already, meat that she didn't have to hunt. Not that she couldn't hunt; no, quite the opposite. She was the largest, oldest, deadliest hunter in the area, and not even others of her own kind dared cross into her territory if they weren't males during mating season. But no predator would turn down an easy meal, and she was no exception.

She sniffed again. There was another scent on the air, one she didn't know…and after twenty years, smells she didn't know were rare.

She growled softly in confusion. It was mammal smell, like the tiny furry annoyances that tried to sneak into her nests and steal her eggs, the ones that could be sent scurrying with a simple snarl. But this was…different.

As dinosaurs went, she was smart. Not as smart as the smaller, quicker hunters, the ones with the foot-claws, but clever enough to know that a new smell, one so close to the scent of dead iguanodon, could mean danger.

But she was top predator. She feared nothing anymore; she _was _danger. She was thirty-five feet, six and a half tons of danger. She was what would, millions of years later, be named _Tyrannosaurs Rex, _the thunder lizard. There was no danger on the planet that couldn't be dealt with either with a warning roar, or with her teeth.

She growled again, pointed her nose towards the smell of meat, and started walking.

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Between the distant sounds of Red having her way with his sword brother, the sounds of a very excited group of troodons having their way with a very unlucky viper, boredom, and the general grumpiness of someone who had gotten just enough sleep to remind them how little they'd slept, Tommy's already bad mood was slipping still further.

He stood abruptly and stalked off towards the machine. He didn't know if glowering at Destro could speed up progress or not, but he was bored, not allowed to kill any of the people he really wanted to kill, and it was worth a shot.

He didn't make any particular effort to be quiet; consequently, Duke only jumped a few inches when Tommy materialized behind him.

"Dammit, Storm." Duke sighed. "Is my shift up already?"

"No."

"Then why…"

"Bored." Tommy shrugged.

A ninja admitting to boredom was usually something to send any sane man running and screaming. Duke, however, just shrugged and visibly came to the decision that if Tommy was here, he wasn't playing "How Many Throwing Stars Can I Get In The Viper Before He Dies?"

Destro was buried in the innards of the machine, fiddling with something. Tommy watched for a few moments.

"How much longer before we can go back?" He asked at last.

"Few hours." Destro sounded distracted. "And if any of you appreciated the delicacy of the adjustments I'm making, you'd know exactly how remarkably quickly that is."

"No special gadget that can fix it?" Tommy scowled. "Poor planning."

"Contrary to what some television programs claim, there is no such thing as a Sonic Screwdriver." Destro's voice was dripping scorn.

Tommy opened his mouth to snark back when he paused.

There were some sounds that transcended species and era. The pathetic cheeping coming from the underbrush just outside the clearing was one of them, one that said "Baby creature in distress".

Curious, he abandoned the verbal sparring with the scientist to investigate.

Investigation turned up a small, fluffier version of the big sleek raptors they'd killed, cowering under a thornbush. It scurried back, hissing at him, raising the fluffy down on the back of its neck in a tiny, ineffective imitation of the grown creatures.

"Storm?" Duke sounded curious. "What on earth…"

Storm Shadow ignored him, heading to the carcass of the iguanodon. He returned to the thornbush with a sizeable slice of raw iguanodon steak.

"Come along." He dangled the meat in front of the small animal…it was only about the size of a large cat. "You want this, don't you?"

The baby raptor eyed him, then the meat, then him. It edged slowly forward.

Five minutes later, the little raptor was happily tearing at the iguanodon meat. A small insect flitted past; the small head shot up, and the dragonfly disappeared with a crunch. The little creature swallowed, looking pleased with itself.

"Storm?" Duke sounded tired. "Storm, are you playing with a baby raptor?"

"Well, I'm guessing we killed its parents. Least I can do is feed it." Storm gently reached out and scratched the downy fluff of the long, serpentine neck. The baby raptor cheeped happily.

"Yoshi." Storm said to no one in particular. "You look like a Yoshi."

"Dammit…you are NOT naming it."

"I just did." Tommy pointed out.

"You are NOT going to keep it."

"Snake Eyes has a wolf."

"…A WOLF is not a DINOSAUR."

"I'm betting I could teach it to just eat the people I told it to." Yoshi gulped the last of the iguanodon steak and bumped his head against Tommy's shin. "See? It likes me."

"Oh dear God, please kill me where I stand." Duke sounded plaintive. "I am not having this discussion."

Tommy went and cut another slice of iguanodon, then turned back towards camp. Yoshi scurried after him.

"STORM! DO NOT TEACH IT TO BITE VIPERS!" Duke's voice followed him. "DAMMIT! ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME? YOU WILL BE ON PT FOR A MONTH IF YOU TEACH THAT THING TO BITE VIPERS."

Tommy grinned. "Ah, but if you do it on your own, and I just don't reprimand you," He said to the baby dinosaur happily trotting by his ankles, "That isn't teaching you, is it? That would just be you showing good judgment, and absolutely not my fault."

Yoshi chirped and head-bumped his calf affectionately.


	4. Chapter 4

"_OW! GET THAT THING AWAY FROM ME!"_

Snake Eyes raised an eyebrow. Beside him, Shana smiled. "Fifteen bucks says Tommy's on KP when we get back."

*No bet.* Snake Eyes pushed aside some ferns and they casually sauntered back into camp.

A viper was rubbing his shin and whimpering. Also, Snake Eyes noted with interest, bleeding profusely. Tommy, sure enough, was laughing. And…Snake Eyes blinked a few times, just to make sure he wasn't seeing things…scratching a small, downy creature that judging by the tiny curved toe-claws held carefully free of the ground was either the monster baby chicken from hell or a young raptor. It looked very pleased with itself, and was eyeing the bleeding viper with the unmistakable air of a cat watching a twitching rabbit.

"Oh boy." Shana said under her breath.

Snake massaged a temple.

"If that thing tries to take a chunk outa me, I'm eatin' raptor veal." Beach was glaring at Tommy.

"Duly noted." Tommy was still snickering. "And the lovers are back…done molesting each other, I see."

*Tommy, what the hell is that? And where did it come from?* Snake crossed his arms.

"What does it look like? And you keep a wolf, so you're arguing from shaky ground, brother. As far as I can figure, it's the chick of the pair we killed. And his name is Yoshi. And he's a _smart _boy." Tommy grinned wolfishly at the bleeding viper. "He did that without me even telling him to. I'm betting that with a few weeks of training, I can get him to kill on command."

The vipers simultaneously backed up a pace.

"God help us all." Scarlett sighed. "It _is _kinda cute, though."

Tommy flicked a twig past the baby dinosaur. Yoshi cheeped happily and dove after it. "I think I could sell Hawk on him. He lets 'Wreck keep that damn parrot and Junkyard keep Mutt around."

Dusty and Outback snorted in laughter. Snake Eyes grinned despite himself. "Y'know, Storm, I never placed you as the type to have a pet." Dusty said conversationally.

"I'm not, but there are exceptions to every rule." Yoshi was systematically murdering the twig, biting and clawing at it intently. Tommy suddenly raised his head, tilting it and listening intently.

"Whut?" Beach, like all of them, knew that look.

"Honestly? Not sure. But it's big, and loud. It's also miles away, so I doubt we need to worry about it yet." Tommy narrowed his eyes. "Yet. Not to unduly alarm anyone…but whatever it is, I think it's heading this way."

"I've only got one belt of ammo left for the Browning." Roadblock frowned. "If we get company, that's gonna go fast. And no offense, guys, but I don't think your knives are gonna do much against something bigger than one of the deuce-and-a-half trucks."

Tommy scowled. "I hate this time." He stood. "I'm going to go relieve Duke. Maybe I can get Yoshi to bite Destro in the ass."

He stalked off. The baby raptor scurried after him, apparently having firmly adopted the ninja as a surrogate parent, and clearly unwilling to let him out of his sight.

"If he keeps that thing." Outback observed calmly. "We're all gonna die."

Snake Eyes just sighed.

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Yoshi was more interested in the iguanodon carcass than in biting Destro. Tommy settled for glowering, and uneasily listening to the distant sounds of very large animals moving about.

Before, he'd heard a growl…a loud growl, to carry over the four or five miles that he judged it to be distant. He hadn't thought twice about it the first time. Then he'd heard it again, a few minutes later, perceptibly closer. He hadn't heard it repeated since, and it was impossible to pick the footfalls of one large animal out of the background noise of the iguanodon herd, browsing and stamping about a mile or so away.

Forty-five minutes or so later, though, he distinctly heard it again. Closer. Maybe two miles off. Loud enough that even Destro looked up.

"What was…" The scientist actually sounded nervous.

"I don't know." Tommy still had his eyes closed, straining to hear. "I've heard it three times now. It's getting closer. How long before that thing's working?"

"Minimum? Half an hour."

"That'll be cutting it close if it keeps heading this way." Tommy cocked his head. There! The fall of a large foot with several tons of bodyweight behind it…a dull, metronomic thudding, very very faint, almost felt rather than heard. One-two. One-two.

Big. Bipedial. Growly. That added up, as far as Tommy was concerned, to Probably Not Friendly.

"Give me your gun." Tommy hissed.

Destro hesitated for a long moment.

"If I wanted to kill you, I wouldn't need the gun to do it." Tommy said impatiently. "I'll give it back. I just need it to signal the others. I don't trust you alone with this thing."

"Fair enough." Destro drew his sidearm and handed it over butt-first.

Tommy fired one round at the sky, then handed the weapon back. The response was quick. Tommy heard the others coming long before he saw them.

"It's okay." He said to the trees. "No trouble yet, but I think there's trouble on the way."

Beach materialized from a clump of ferns; Duke wriggled out from under some brush. The others followed.

"Define 'Trouble on the way'." Duke raised his eyebrows.

"Big and irritable. I'm guessing lots of teeth, too. I've been keeping tabs on it for almost an hour now, and it's definitely coming this way."

Duke swore quietly. "How far away?"

"Little less than two miles. I'm guessing we'll have company in about a half-hour."

"I should also have the time machine ready for operation in about half an hour." Destro said from an opened access panel. "If the ninja is wrong…which, it pains me to admit, he rarely is…we should be able to leave then."

"Best news ah've heard all day." Beach grinned. "If Scaly wants to play before then, we can play. Maybe ah can make myself some nice new armor to go with the dino-hide boots Outback is makin'."

"You are completely insane." This was one of the vipers, staring at Beach with something like fearful respect.

Beach grinned under his balaclava at the shorter man. "And if'n I don't get to play with Scaly, maybe I can play with you instead. Won't that be fun? Don't think yer skin would make good armor, though. Too soft and easy to tear."

The viper inched backwards.

"Beach, no breaking them until we get home." Duke said firmly.

"Top, all due respect, but yer no fun."

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As far as Stuart R. Selkirk, code name Outback was concerned, there wasn't a whole lot in life better than roughing it. During his childhood in Wyoming, he'd happily spent as much time as possible chasing pronghorn antelope, scrambling over hills, and getting scratched on sagebrush. He'd once gone a full week in summer without going home, and his parents hadn't been concerned; he'd taken a knife, after all, and told them he'd stay on the ranch. They'd known their son well enough to realize that he was crazier than anything he was likely to run into on the ranch, and had simply warned him not to start any fires too big to put out.

To Outback, this whole mission had been a marvelous experience. First, the Australian Outback…a wonderfully wild place filled with all sorts of creatures that could kill you!...and then, of all the crazy, wonderful places, the _cretaceous! _Dinosaurs! Skins never before tanned! Plants never before nibbled at experimentally! New animals! New animals to eat! New rivers and hills! New _everything_! The whole _planet_ an undiscovered frontier!

He would, in fact, be quite reluctant to leave, and was kind of wondering if, once G.I. Joe snagged the time machine, he could figure it out well enough to maybe take a few more sojourns back to sixty-seven million BC. He was betting that there would be a hell of a market for dinosaur leather, too.

Storm Shadow was twitchy, but then he'd been in a bad mood since they'd gotten here. Everyone else seemed tense too, waiting either for Destro to announce that the machine was working again or for Storm's big critter to turn up.

He was examining the wriggling insect life under a log and wondering if any of it would be any good to eat when he heard the growl. A deep, bone-shaking, primal sound that he felt through the ground as much as heard through the air. Outback had tangled with many dangerous predators, but this sound stood the short hairs on the back of his neck straight up on end.

He straightened, automatically going for his rifle. Storm Shadow was standing statue-still, his eyes fixed on the trees. Everyone else automatically looked the same way, towards the source of the growl.

The trees swayed. There were several soft 'clicks' as people flicked safeties off of firearms.

And then a massive snout emerged from the treeline, and an equally massive creature followed. Massive jaws parted, jagged six-inch teeth gleamed white as bleached bone, and Outback, for the first time facing anything that wasn't human, felt his blood go cold.

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The big she-Rex examined the scene in front of her. She had good color vision, and her first impression of the creatures in front of her was _color, _all colors, strange colorful fur that was different on all of them. She sniffed. Mammals. The new mammal-smell she'd caught miles ago.

Strange mammals. Big mammals; still smaller than her (the biggest one barely came up to her knees) but far bigger than the furry little egg-stealers. Walkers-on-two-legs, like her. And they smelled strange; like hot metal and fire and other things that she didn't even have concepts for. But she smelled fear, and that reassured her. _Everything _smelled like fear when facing her; that was as it should be.

There was something sitting near the dead iguanodon that had drawn her here. It smelled like metal and strangeness, but it wasn't alive and wasn't a threat and so she ignored it. But the strange two-legged mammals around the strange-smelling something were threats to her meat; scavengers who'd gotten to the carcass first. That she knew how to deal with.

She snarled a warning. The fear-smell increased, but the mammals didn't move.

Odd. She drew a breath, and this time it wasn't a snarl; it was a full on roar, the earth-shaking, audible for miles warning roar of a dominant female _Tyrannosaurus Rex._

Any Cretaceous creature that lived alongside the tyrant lizard would have known instantly what that roar meant; "You won't get another warning." The big female had sent many other Rexes fleeing with that roar before.

And two of the strange mammals…the ones with fur the same color as the sky…did break and run. But two more, though they stank of fear, ran the opposite way.

Towards her.

Mistake.

They were waving little sticks that smelled like metal and fire. There was a loud sound, and the big female Rex dimly felt something hit just above her eye, but the skull of a _Tyrannosaurus Rex _was a battering ram built by evolution to survive slamming at forty miles per hour into prey just as massive as she was. Against the massively reinforced skull, the small sidearm didn't have a chance. The bullet nicked a scale and bounced harmlessly off, and the big female barely even noticed.

For all her bulk, the big female was remarkably agile. She whipped her stiff counterbalance of a tail around, lunged, and snapped. Once, flipped the suddenly-limp creature aside. Twice. This time, the crushing force of her bite and her serrated teeth sheared the second mammal-thing cleanly in half.

For all their bravado, the strange mammals were as fragile as any mammal she'd ever bitten. They came apart easily in her jaws, their soft skin providing no resistance for her saw-edged teeth.

She flipped the top half of the creature into the air, caught it, and swallowed it whole.

Not bad. It had been awhile since she'd eaten mammals…not since she'd been a chick. They were really too small to interest her anymore. But these…these were just the right size for a light snack. She delicately picked up the second half, swallowed that too.

One of the creatures…the one with a face that gleamed strangely…was making loud sounds at the others. A few of the creatures bunched tight against the strange lump, but a few more with the sky-colored fur inched forward, stinking of fear and trembling.

She snarled. A few more of those loud pops went off; she dimly felt a brief sting on her shoulder, but ignored it.

She lunged again, and then it was just a hunt, the prey easier than most. Several of the mammals went down under her teeth; she pinned one more down with her foot and snapped his head off. She snapped at another, caught him, easily tore a leg off, gulped it whole, looked around for more.

Then there was a long tearing popping sound, and the stench of smoke and metal and fire thickened. Something bit into her tail.

She roared in pain. That had _hurt. _

She abandoned the dead prey and turned to the live ones still around the lump of strangeness. One was holding a big metal stick, with smoke coming from it, making upset sounds. She snarled, and lunged for them, anger starting to turn the edges of her vision red.

More pops, more smoke-hot-metal-fire smell, and she felt a few more stings of pain along her side, but nothing serious. She coiled herself to strike...there was a female within reach, fur on her head the color of trees when cold-time came…

And something moved in the shadows, the female dove aside. Her teeth closed on empty air, and there was a long chatter of fire and smoke very close to her head…

…terrible pain, heat tearing into her jaw at almost point-blank range. She roared recoiled, stumbling back, feeling blood dripping down her skin, smelling it on the dark mammal, the one who'd appeared from nowhere, the one holding the metal fire-stick that had hurt her. She snarled…

And then pain exploded again, this time in her leg, something terribly sharp slicing through thick skin and corded muscle. Her roar rose, a shriek of pain, and she stumbled again, and this time her leg gave out and she collapsed, six and a half tons of bone and sinew and muscle landing hard.

She felt the dull crack of snapping ribs, and pain blossomed in her shoulder. She vaguely saw a mammal with fur the color of snow slip away, the scent of her blood on him.

Instinct took over. A downed creature was a dead creature; _up up get up. _She rolled, got her feet under her. She dug the claws of her otherwise-useless but surprisingly strong arms into the ground; one dangled limply, but the other was undamaged.

She surged to her feet, ignoring the biting pain, ignoring the blood dripping down her leg and jaw and tail. She glared at the creatures, those small, fierce mammals.

She was old and wise enough to know when to cut her losses and run. She roared once more at the strange creatures, and turned her back on them and limped painfully off.

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Scarlett was shaking, watching the huge creature limp back into the trees, leaving a trail of blood spattered behind it.

She knew she was shaking, and she couldn't help it. Those teeth…god, each one of them was half the length of her forearm…those teeth had come so very, very close to her. She'd seen the _Tyrannosaurus Rex_ dismantle fifteen vipers in the space of about five and a half seconds…and those teeth had come so close to her.

Then there was a strong arm around her waist…Snake Eyes, god bless his crazy heart, who'd thrown himself at a god damned T-motherfucking-Rex because it was threatening her and his friends, who'd emptied a full Uzi clip into the monster from barely a foot away.

*Are you okay?* He signed.

She should be asking _him _that. "Fine." She shook herself. "I'm fine, Snake. Thank you."

A smile under the black mask. *Anytime. You're sure you're fine? You're shaking.*

"Just shook up." She smiled slightly. "That…is a hell of a thing to see coming for you."

*True.*

"Is anybody I like hurt?" Duke's voice interrupted.

There was a chorus of negatives; it seemed all of the Joes had escaped unscathed. Tommy was glaring at the edge of his sword, bloody murder in his eyes.

"Storm?" Shana forcibly distracted herself from her close call. "You okay?"  
"Those things have bones like granite." Tommy scowled. "Nicked my sword on its femur."

A soft, worried chirruping sound from the grass. The tiny baby viper, which had apparently hidden during the excitement, was sniffing at the blood on Tommy's uniform.

"Not mine." Tommy leaned down and scratched the little raptor on the head absently.

Yoshi had apparently figured that out through smell; he chirped more happily and bumped his head against Tommy's shin, clearly angling for more scratching.

Destro had abandoned the machine and had gently picked up one of the blades of grass coated in _Tyrannosaurus _blood. He was just about to put it in a small plastic vial produced from a pocket when several firearms were aimed at his back.

"Uh uh." Beach growled. "I ain't having you cloning that thing. Back to work, or I start breaking your unimportant bits."

Destro sighed. "I don't suppose…"

"Nuh uh. And you don't have many troops left. Ah wouldn't put money on them being able to protect you."

"Fine." Destro grumpily dropped the sample. "It's ready. It has been. I just wanted to get a sample of that creature."

Duke swore. "You son of a…"

"Now now. None of your men were harmed. Let's not be unpleasant." Destro pocketed the vial and made his way to the machine. "Same as before…any human within a ten meter radius shall be transported, as well as anything they are holding or that is on their person. If you'd all step over here?

"Storm, leave the raptor." Duke scowled as Tommy bent to pick the baby creature up.

"I'm thinking I don't want to." Storm straightened. Yoshi squawked indignantly but didn't bite. "He'd die here alone. Besides, I really do think I can train him not to eat freindlies."

"General Hawk will _blow a blood vessel…_"

"Wolf. Eagle. I'm thinking I could sell him on this. And even if I couldn't, I could send him to Billy."

"GOD DAMN IT STORM…"

And then everything went white, and then dark and swirly, and then they were landing in a tangle of limbs in cool grass.

Snake Eyes blinked up at the trees for a second, then sat up. Looked around. Blinked again.

Beach crawled out from under Outback. Looked around.

"Where the FUCK…" Beach blinked. "Are we in Central Park?"

*I believe so.* Snake Eyes rubbed his forehead, where a slight headache was dissipating. He glanced around. The Joes were there, but no Cobras were anywhere to be seen. But, judging from the candy wrappers blowing past and the distant blare of traffic horns, they were back in their own time.

Scarlett peeled herself out of the grass. "That sucked more than the first time…oh, Destro you sneaky son of a whore…He dumped us as far away from his lab as he could, didn't he?"

"Looks like." Beach scowled. "At least when we go back after him we know not to hit the big red button."

Duke groaned, rolled over, and painfully levered himself upright. "What…"

"We're back, but it appears Destro dumped the lot of us in the middle of New York, and I'll bet my pay for the next year that him and his surviving vipers and machine are deep in a non-compromised lab." Scarlett cracked her neck.

"Son of a bitch." Duke sighed. "How is everyone? Anyone dead?"

Assorted groans.

"Good…Storm?"

"He's still out." Beach nudged the unconscious ninja with the toe of his boot. "Gonna be one unhappy spook when he comes around." This prospect seemed to cheer the Ranger up somewhat.

"Well, at least he's alive." Duke sighed and flopped back down in the grass. "This is going to be a _bitch _to explain to General Hawk."

A worried cheeping suddenly sounded from the grass. Anyone conscious enough glanced over. A small, fluffy raptor was sitting on Tommy's chest, peering at him with a distinct air of concern.

Duke swore.


	5. Chapter 5

William Mason, as far as I know, is someone I completely made up. If there IS a paleontologist specializing in fossil preparation by that name, I am apparently psychic. In which case…awesome.

Also, everything said here about this particular fossil's distinctive injuries are absolutely true. Except, as far as I know, the bullet part.

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Year; nineteen hundred ninety eight.

Location; Chicago, Illinois, USA. Field Museum of Natural History.

Department; McDonald's Bone Prep Lab.

William Mason had dedicated his life to the study of paleontology; in particular, fossil preparation. There was just something so thrilling about carefully, carefully scratching, drilling, and brushing away solid rock, a grain at a time, and watching something that no other human had ever lain eyes on before come to light, one square millimeter at a time. About watching a creature buried for millions of years come together again, an unfathomably ancient animal resurrected.

He was good at it, too. Sharp eyes, a steady, precise hand that a brain surgeon might envy, and limitless patience. William could sit hunched over one bone for hour upon hour, happily scraping away a few square millimeters of rock matrix with a soft paintbrush and a fine dental pick, and often left at the end of his shift only reluctantly.

His aptitude for his chosen field had earned him a place on the team working on one of the greatest paleontological prizes of the decade; the largest, most complete _Tyrannosaurus Rex _skeleton ever found, the crown jewel of the Field Museum's dinosaur collection.

He was so good, in fact, that he was currently working on perhaps the most recognizable feature of the most famous skeleton of the most famous dinosaur ever; the massive skull of Sue, the _Tyrannosaurus Rex _skeleton affectionately named after her discoverer. William was meticulously picking sandy grains of rock out of the curious damage to the lower jaw; a series of pits in the petrified bone that many speculated to be the result of an injury or infection of some sort.

Whatever had happened to the old girl, he thought affectionately, she'd toughed it out. There was new bone growth around the damaged areas; she'd clearly survived whatever injury or sickness had caused the pitting.

_You were a terror once, weren't you? _He smiled as he brushed a few loosened grains of the sandy rock away. They'd guessed her age at about twenty seven or twenty eight when she'd died; old for a 'Rex. _And old hunters only get old by being the meanest, baddest, and smartest. Wonder how many fights you won? How many little Rexes you raised?_

His musing was cut off suddenly by a glint that shouldn't be there. He squinted more closely at his work.

He was cleaning out one of the deepest pits in Sue's lower jaw. And when the grains he'd just cleared away had fallen, they'd revealed corroded metal.

_What the hell…_William blinked, and started carefully picking away rock again.

What felt like minutes later but must have been hours, he picked a final few grains away, and the incongruous bit of metal rolled out of the pit in the jawbone and into the palm of his hand.

William stared at it, feeling his brain going a thousand ways at once and then shutting down completely.

Because he _recognized _it. And he _shouldn't. _Because this _wasn't possible._

William had four brothers. They'd grown up in northern Minnesota, where every male (and female) over the age of nine hunted. One of William's brothers had become a sheriff. Two had gone into the Army.

And so, even corroded, even almost falling apart, William recognized the thing in his hand, and how utterly, utterly impossible it was.

He was holding a nine millimeter bullet, misshapen from impact with bone, the maker's mark forever lost to corrosion, but still unmistakably a modern nine millimeter bullet.

Pulled from the jawbone of a creature sixty-seven million years dead, unearthed from the rock that had preserved the bones through the ages.

_That would be where the infection came from. _A small part of his brain was informing him. _Tough old bird to survive that._

_But…but…_

_The rock never lies, William. I wonder…those broken ribs, those injured vertebra in her tail, her injured leg…_

He rolled the bullet around in his palm, glanced around the room. His colleagues were absorbed in their work; no one was looking his way. He looked back at the bullet.

It couldn't be here. It went in the face of everything that two centuries of paleontology had painstakingly pieced together. The little piece of metal in his hand could tear apart everything he knew and send the entire discipline that he loved so much into utter upheaval and turmoil. _If _anyone believed him, that was. And, in all probability, they wouldn't. And if he kept insisting…like he _should_, in proper stubborn scientific fashion…he could lose the job he'd worked so hard to land.

William was a scientist. But he was also human, with all the flaws that entails. Staring at the bullet in his hand, he came to a decision. He closed his hand tight around the bit of metal, and slid it into his shirt pocket. _I will never speak of this. No one will know, and my job will be safe and everything will keep making sense. Maybe, if I keep myself from thinking about it, I can forget this ever happened. _

When he left work a few hours later, he threw the bullet into the dumpster out back.

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Sue the T-Rex went on display two years later, to wide public excitement and much scientific interest. The curious bone damage….the calcified femur, where some sort of injury or infection had caused massive thickening of the bone, the broken, healed ribs and shoulder, the injury-induced arthritis in a few of her tail vertebra, and the odd pitting on her lower jaw…were all studied and tentatively explained.

The ribs and shoulder had likely been from some sort of fight or fall; perhaps a spat over territory with another Rex, or a slip on loose stone. The leg had clearly been infected; perhaps an injury that festered, went to the bone, and was slow in healing. Where from? Well, she _was_ a predator. There were a thousand different ways for a predator to get injured. The jawbone? Possibly an early form of _Trichomonas gallinae, _a parasite that was known to infest some bird species. Her tail? Again, there were a thousand different ways for a Rex to get injured. Who really knew?

The one thing that was clear was that none of those injuries had killed her. Whatever trauma she'd endured, Sue had been a tough old battleaxe of a Rex. She'd healed from her injuries and probably had kept terrorizing the local herbivores for years before dying, likely simply from old age.

The bullet was never seen again. On trash pickup day, it was moved from the dumpster to a Chicago dump, buried in newspapers, dirty diapers, and fast food wrappers. It slowly corroded away, and William never spoke a word of its existence to anyone.

And Sue stood motionless, her skeleton snarling silently at the visitors to the Field Museum, and even when a wide-eyed pair of red-haired children blinked up at the massive snarling skull with its jagged complement of six-inch teeth as a silent blond man eyed the crowd warily and a red-haired woman paid for family day passes, she didn't speak a word, and no one ever guessed her secrets.


End file.
